Church of England -- Clergy -- Correspondence; Clergy -- England -- Correspondence; Robinson, Forbes, 1867-1904 -- Correspondence
I cannot help thinking of you both at this time. It means so much to you
both--more than either of you dreams that it means. The issues of your
Ordination day are very far reaching indeed. They stretch away and
beyond this world in which we now are. The rush of school work and of
preparation for examination has probably not left you as much time as you
could have wished for thinking over what it all means. I hope you will
have more time after the service is over. But you may be comforted in
the thought that the last few years have been a definite preparation for
your life-work. Though you must regret, as you never regretted before,
misuse of time and powers in the past, yet you have had an education
which has in some degree prepared you for this time, an education for
which you may thank our common Master. But this {96} thought by itself
would be but a small comfort. For you must feel, if you are the man I
take you for, how unworthy you are to be what you are called to be. Now
there are two ways of dealing with this feeling. You may say, 'I am not
called to be an absolute saint; but I will try to reach a fairly high
standard;' or you may say, 'Yes, I am called to be an absolute saint. I
will not lower my ideal. I will comfort myself with that single word
"called." If He has called me, He will do in me and for me what He
wills.' This second way is the true way of dealing with feelings of
unworthiness and unfitness. You and I are utterly unfit. But we are
both called--called from our mother's womb--called to be saints and to be
ministers. He who called us will help us. With man the call seems
quixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible. At times when
the call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little
child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of
treachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to
denounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. Yet the
call is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and again and again you will in
all probability find what a help it is to look back to that day in which
the call took formal shape. You have that as a definite fact to rest
upon, to reprove, to encourage, to urge to renewed effort, to force you
to be true and energetic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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